BBS: The Online Learning Networks of the 80s

Back in the days of Reagan, MTV, and New Coke, I was heavily involved in the first online learning networks. I spent a weekend typing five pages of machine code into my Commodore 64 to create a bulletin board system (BBS). Page after page of a computer program that looked like this:

 

(From The Craft of Coding)

On a computer that I hooked up to a color TV and had a cassette tape drive as its external memory.

(Wikimedia Commons)

Mr. Will Richardson's TEDxNYED talk on social online learning networks was nothing new to me because I have been using these networks since I was thirteen. Granted, the networks were not as accessible as they are today. I was lucky enough to grow up with friends who were into computers and ham radio (by the way, I'm KC3FSN if any other hams want to CQ me). We would spend hours learning physics, math, and other subjects outside of school because we were having fun! Like Mr. Richardson's daughter, we didn't know we weren't ready for higher math and sophisticated electronics. We just learned things because we wanted to do cool stuff like bounce radio signals off meteorites.

I remember being in a high school geometry class and being told to put my book away because we were learning about right triangles today. The book that I was reading? Calculus for the Millions.

As Mr. Richardson points out, teaching to the test is killing the thirst for learning by students and the love of teaching from our educators. As he points out, we have an educational system that no longer applies to today's world. I see that in my training as I watch yet another trainer kills by PowerPoint. 

At work, I talk a lot about microlearning, content curation, cafeteria-style learning, and personalized learning environments. However, this seems like old wine in new bottles because this all reminds me of my early youth where we had a problem we wanted to solve or an innovation to try. We would go to the local library or jump on the BBSes or jump on the ham radio rig and ask our geeky peers how to do something.  Failing was part of the learning experience and was nothing to be feared. 

That is the problem with teaching to the test. It is all about not failing and to determine the one correct answer to a question posed by a faceless authority. Where is the satisfaction of achievement in that? Where is the satisfaction of learning?

For a trip back to the 80s, here is how we used to access Google . . .